It was supposed to be a happy family reunion, but instead a British Columbia grandmother is stuck in China in a coma, her family unable to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring her home in an air ambulance.
Lilia Avoutova, 78, who is of mixed Chinese and Ukrainian heritage, arrived in Kunming on March 4, her family said.
But she and her 79-year-old husband, Savout, both of Burnaby, BC, never made it to Avoutova’s birthplace in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwest China, after suffering a brain hemorrhage and stroke two days later.
Daughter Elena Lanteigne said her mother had been in a coma at a Kunming hospital since March 8.
“It was really difficult, so the reunion never happened,” Lanteigne said through tears, speaking from Kunming where she and her brother have been living for about three weeks.
“It’s really hard to see your loved one in a hospital bed with all these instruments around them, and you don’t know how they’re doing and if they’re going to survive and if they’re going to do well,” Lanteigne said, wiping away tears on a video call.
He said his mother lived in China until she was ten years old when Avoutova’s father’s farm was taken over by the government.
The family moved to Kazakhstan, where Avoutova married and had children, before the family moved to Canada about 30 years ago.
Lanteigne said her mother had reunited with her relatives in China 10 years ago and hoped to see them on what she hoped would be her last visit to her hometown.
Communicating with doctors has been a “huge challenge” in China because of language barriers, Lanteigne said, forcing them to rely on Google Translate to understand her mother’s conditions.
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He said his parents didn’t buy any travel insurance, and now the ICU in China costs about $1,000 a day, which has become a “heavy” burden for him.
Her retired parents live a “very frugal life,” she said.
“My brother and I had some money that we had saved, we were able to tap into it, but it has started to run out,” he added.
Lanteigne said it’s “very troubling” to think about the finances, and they still have to come up with huge expenses to bring her mother home.
Lanteigne said they got some quotes for a medical plane, which works like an air ambulance with medical personnel, so they can bring his mother home quickly, but the cost is about $400,000, which they can’t afford.
There is another option available – to move his mother to Vancouver from Kunming using a stretcher service on a commercial flight, and the cost is about $108,800.
But it is very dangerous since Avoutova has a cerebral hemorrhage, and when the plane goes up, it can put pressure on the brain, which makes it “very dangerous,” said Lanteigne.
Lanteigne said her mother’s family doctor suggested that the best option now is to wait at least a month or two, to allow the blood to flow back into her body, which would make it safe for her to walk.
Lanteigne said she is holding on to hope that her mother can leave the ICU soon and move to a rehabilitation unit, allowing them to prepare to take her home in the next few months.
He said his mother is one of those people who can make friends with anyone, and wherever she goes, people are nice to her.
“People want to talk to him, they know him.” She is extremely friendly,” said Lanteigne, adding that her grandchildren affectionately call her babushka, which means grandmother in Ukrainian.
When people visited Avoutova at her home, she served them tea and food.
“If he doesn’t have anything in his house, which is rare, he will run to the store and find something in his cupboards,” said Lanteigne.
Although the past three weeks have been difficult, Lanteigne said they have had some promising news in the past few days – her mother opened her eyes briefly and was able to move her hand a little.
“Lately I have been talking to him about people who are trying to help, so that he knows that people are thinking of him, people know who he is, there are people who want to help,” said Lanteigne.
Avoutova is also a grandmother of four grandchildren, and Lanteigne said she was playing audio recordings and videos sent by her grandchildren next to her bed, telling her that they can’t wait to see their beloved “babushka”.
Lanteigne said her mother showed her kindness and compassion, spending her life caring for others, and now she has to find a way to bring him home, no matter how difficult the process will be.
The journey isn’t easy, but Lanteigne said she’s been touched by the overwhelming response she’s received from Canadians through the online fundraising page.
“My friend suggested, and I said, it seems really difficult, I’m asking people for money, I’m asking for help from strangers.”
But a GoFundMe page has raised more than $16,000 as of Saturday, about 70 percent of the goal.
“I’m just blown away, I’m really shocked, I’m surprised by the amount of people who came out to help,” said Lanteigne.
“And I really appreciate that. I think it was incredible, and it shows the incredible human spirit that people have for each other. That’s touching, I can’t even put it into words. It was amazing to see that.”
